Tuesday, September 11, 2007

India

India seems more developed to me than China. I am so relieved to be out of the range of Chinese censorship. Shanghai takes all my least favorite aspects of Western culture and obsesses over them while the government represses all of the best-- freedom of speech, religion and press. Beijing is slightly better but going to the country as a lifelong American feels infinitely oppressive. Things are more lax than they used to be there, but it's just so strange to not be able to talk about some things, or to not be able to publish some things, or not be able to safely write a song about some things. Examples: none of the young people know about Tiannamen Square 1989. When Beijing took half of its cars off the road to test the effect on air quality for the Olympics next year, the results were not announced. This was the only way you knew it was not good news.

I am in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, India. Tamil Nadu is the southeasternmost state. I really, really like it. Sivakasi is a relatively small town of 100,000 or so people. I am working for the only English-language publication in the town, a monthly magazine. Sivakasi is the publishing capital of India and former child labor capital of the world.

After I left the Great Wall on Friday night, I went home and slept for six hours and attempted to spend the rest of my Chinese money. I left for the airport at 6:10am and flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, then to Chennai, India. I had one of the best experiences of my life on the flight from Malaysia to India. After 2 1/2 months in cities of more than 15 million people, the sky over the ocean made me cry with its beauty. I have never seen anything like it; it sounds cliche but it seemed close enough to touch and made of velvet. I have never seen the night sky in such an open space until now. The stars went all the way down to the horizon and the Milky Way was clearly visible. In China, it was a good night if five stars were visible.

A guy from the office picked me up at the airport around 10:30pm and dropped me off at a hotel where I spent the night. The ride there was taken in an Indian brand of car that looks like a 1948 Cadillac; the kind Hank Williams died in. Really fantastic. Modern looking cars are kind of rare. In town, cars are kind of rare in general.

View from the backseat:


Indian beds have no blankets or cover sheets; you just sleep on top with the ceiling fan whirring as fast as it can go. It is hot and humid, you sweat all night, but it's not THAT bad. Windows are generally open, with bars across them if it's a hotel or fancy decorative concrete if it's a home. The bugs here aren't too bad so far, I've only got about five bites. Bugs and the occasional lizard just kind of wander in and out of the building at their leisure. The horn honking and traffic here is much worse than in China. Honking your horn is a part of driving; drivers are just letting everyone know their exact whereabouts. They probably honk about 10 times a minute but I don't find it annoying, it's pretty necessary because there are no lanes but a lot of types of vehicles-- trucks, autos, rickshaws, bikes, motorcycles.. anyway, I woke up a few times to the horns, starting around 5:30, then finally succumbed at 9 and stumbled towards the bathroom, still half-asleep. I slept with the bathroom door closed because that was how I found it, and when I opened it, a flock of pigeons and I scared the living daylights out of each other. They flew out the barred window and I took my shower/bath out of a bucket. It's actually pretty easy and reminds me of when I was like four and being bathed by someone else because you use a big cup-like thing to pour water over yourself.

We took a train 8 hours south from Chennai to Madurai. It was interesting to watch the scenery for the first four hours, but exceedingly boring after that since it was about my 28th hour of travel over the two-day period. After that was a 2-hour car ride (also in Indian Cadillac) to Sivakasi. The autos have no seatbelts and the drivers are keen on passing straight into oncoming traffic. The horn honks and the high beams go on-off-on-off-on-off. They turn their brights on when there are other cars around and use the lowbeams when there is no traffic.

Most people speak at least some English here (remnants of British colonialism) but the preferred language is Tamil. However, the accents are so different that the man who picked me up at the airport and I found it quite difficult to understand each other. I am used to deciphering a Chinese accent and he is more used to British. Almost everyone can read English but speaking is rarer. There is MUCH less staring than in China so far and people are far friendlier. I went on a tour of the town last night. The women and little girls find me infinitely interesting and will wave 20 times in a row, especially from buses and say, "HIIII!!! HELLO!! HIIII!!!" I haven't gotten any Indian clothes yet so part of this might be because my calves are showing in the skirts I brought.

I am staying with a family. Their house is very clean. There is a father, a mother and three daughters aged 20, 14 and 11, I think. The father prints Bible covers for the local church. He leaves at 4am everyday to do this. I think the mother must be a seamstress because there are four sewing machines in their front room. They are middle class and the oldest daughter goes to the local women's college. The family is Christian and have Jesus stickers all over the house. One on each door and some on the cabinets. A couple of them are like the sparkle-glitter kind you would get out of a vending machine at a bowling alley. I am living with three other women in the upstairs part of the house. One is from Switzerland, one from Germany and one from Nashville. The homes in the neighborhood all look out over each other; we can sit on the roof at two different levels and look at the stars. It's utterly fantastic. The one from Nashville is heavily involved in the music industry. It's weird because we kind of do the same thing and both for no reason at all... in short, try to get publicity for bands. She is more methodical about it than I am; actually befriending A&R people and mailing stuff out and has worked for record companies and BMI. I find it half-interesting and half disgusting to hear her talk. I guess that's my feeling about the music industry in general.

I feel a little weird about staying with the family because they practically wait on us. They cook three meals a day (we go home for two hours at lunch, from 1 to 3) and the oldest daughter serves, a little like a waiter in a restaurant. The food is fantastic and practically everyone here is vegetarian. The restaurants along the side of the road say "Non-veg" if they serve meat because that is the oddity, not the other way around! I never know what I am eating but it's all been good and usually yellow or brown. One popular south Indian dish is called "dosai" which is a huge flat piece of thin breadlike stuff that you dump a couple of sauces onto, one tomato-y and one coconut-y and spread it around, then bread into pieces to eat. Aside from the good-tastingness of the food, eating in India is vaguely like my biggest hypochondriac nightmare come true. Everyone eats with their hands (harder than it sounds), for every meal and doesn't wash them first. No silverware at all. Restaurants and kitchens have a sink nearby where you rinse off at at the end. The fact that you must eat with your right hand (left is reserved for the bathroom) makes it even harder for me; I'm so messy! (i am left handed)

I think I will get sick soon. I really hate being sick, with a severe passion ... the only bright side of it is the end when I feel invincible because of the raised white blood cell count. For about three days after I'm sick, I feel invincible and touch anything and everything I want! And then rub my eyes or scratch my ear, and I can't get sick because I was just sick.

I ride a bike to work. It is the heaviest bike I have ever met.

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